Various recreational activities, such as athletic activities or competition based activities, often require precise and repeatable motions to consistently achieve success. Such motions typically require extensive and repeatable training to achieve the desired degree of improvement. One difficulty commonly faced relating to such activities involves an inability to diagnose why certain movements are not resulting in the desired outcome. To address this issue, it is not uncommon for a trainer or coach to be utilized to provide instruction while observing the associated movement that may be frustrating success, thereby providing context on how to improve the associated movement. However, the use of a second party such as a coach or trainer can be time consuming, expensive, and in many cases, impractical when attempting to improve at an activity that requires multiple practice sessions to see substantial and consistent improvement.
One such activity includes golfing. Many golfers struggle to consistently make desirable contact with a golf ball while performing a variety of different strokes and shots. The lack of consistency is often a result of the golfer unknowingly introducing slight variations in movement to the golfer's swing with each repeated attempt. The lack of precisely controlled and repeatable movements accordingly leads to the club face striking the ball at various different angular positions which result in inconsistent contact, and hence inconsistent shot placement.
For example, many golfers struggle heavily with the issue of unnecessary motion of the head during the act of completing a golf stroke. This problem may be particularly problematic when performing the act of putting. Many golfers tend to raise or lower the head during the process of putting, resulting in a putt where the putter face makes less than desirable contact with the ball such as striking an upper portion or a lower portion of the ball. Other golfers have great difficult remaining still in the moments leading up to the putt, causing unnecessary movement and misalignment immediately prior to the beginning of the putting stroke. Still, other golfers tend to sway, rock, or otherwise improperly transfer weight during the act of putting, causing additional misalignment of the putting path. In all cases, the issues encountered are the result of the golfer having a lack of control of his or her body immediately prior to and during the putting stroke.
It is often increasingly difficult for many golfers to correct such problems as the extremely minor variations from one putt to the next are often difficult to sense or quantify when attempting to diagnose potential issues. Accordingly, many golfers struggle to correct potential issues with their swing or putting stroke as there is no effective way for such golfers to monitor the movements of their bodies that may be resulting in less than desirable golf shots.
In addition to athletic pursuits, it is often desirable to track the precise movements of a person while in the act of exercising, training, or rehabilitating injuries. For example, it may be beneficial to track the movement of a person when performing physical therapy exercises requiring relatively little motion of the corresponding portions of the body. Many individuals suffering from neck or spinal injuries may be limited in or incapable of rotating or tilting his or her head through a desired range of motion. The relative stiffness of such muscles and joints may make it difficult for such an individual undergoing the physical therapy to monitor his or her progress due to the perceived lack of motion occurring during the prescribed exercises. Similarly, it may be difficult for such an individual to monitor his or her form in performing the prescribed exercises, causing the therapy to be ineffective.
It would therefore be desirable to produce a device configured to accurately monitor a position or a relative movement of a portion of a body of a user when carrying out a prescribed motion.